Canucks and Beyond

Entries with the tag: sweden

The Sedins were informed they were one of six nominees for the Victoria Stipendium, an annual award given to the Swedish athlete of the year by Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden.

Every year since Crown Princess Victoria was born in 1979 the honor has been presented to an athlete or athletes as part of the princess’ birthday celebration, beginning with Ingemar Stenmark, the greatest slalom and giant slalom alpine skier of all time.

The Sedins won the award together; as a duo, they were honoured as the singular athlete of year, which seems a bit odd. But apparently the whole thing is quite a big deal in Sweden, and the twins were only the 3rd and 4th hockey players to ever win it (Stefan Persson and Peter Forsberg preceded them).

During the awards, the royal attendees apparently mistook the garbage bags on their seats (keeping the seats dry from the rain) as rain gear. “Next thing you know King Carl XVI Gustaf is punching holes for his arms and head into a garbage bag.” Seriously.

Afterwards, they presented Crown Princess Victoria with a Canucks jersey. Poor woman—and the rest of her family—are probably still confused by the whole thing.

“We’d also heard mention of it, but we decided that it would only be worse if we went out and told the fans they were absolutely not allowed to throw dildos on the ice,” said AIK club head Mats Hedenstrom to the newspaper.

Now there’s a line you don’t hear every day. For more on an awesome story, Puck Daddy tells the whole tale.

It’s not often that one needs to tag a hockey story as NSFW, but I suppose there are people bound to find this one offensive. (Not me, however—I think it’s hilarious. But I can be incredibly immature…)

The Canadian Press reports that Hayley Wickenheiser—the all-time leading scorer of Canadian women’s hockey and widely considered one the best female players to ever set foot on the ice—has made the cut for men’s professional hockey again.

A Swedish third-tier team, Eskilstuna Linden, has reportedly signed her for the 2008-09 season. The last time Wickenheiser played men’s pro hockey was a short stint in the Finnish Second Division, and her signing was met with mixed reviews, but there’s no doubting the impact she’s had on professional hockey culture.

Highly touted Swedish prospect Fabian Brunnstrom is closing in on becoming a Vancouver Canuck. The Canucks and Brunnstrom’s agent JP Barry are hoping to have something finalized within the next week to ten days as the process has heated up over the last few days.

The same basic information was also repeated by Scott Morrison on CBC’s Hotstove Saturday night as well [video available here].

So: the hottest, unsigned forward to be talked about around the NHL for the last 4 months might be coming to Vancouver next season? How’d that happen?

The North American press and hockey blogs have spent months analyzing the possible return of Peter Forsberg to the NHL (and often with the kind of reverence usually attributed to the devout contemplating the resurrection of Jesus Christ) but their hopes were sadly interrupted yesterday with the news that

But while those same analysts seriously ponder how this travesty could happen—studying the various miscues of Forsberg’s recent career as he’s attempted to regain his health and strength—the Swedish newspapers haven’t been nearly as preoccupied with all the accepted jargon.

They have their own theory about how Forsberg’s career ground to a halt: